A Sharpened Condition Number Estimate for the BPX Preconditioner of Elliptic Finite Element Problems on Highly Nonuniform Triangulations

In this paper it is shown that for highly nonuniformly refined triangulations the condition number of the BPX preconditioner for elliptic finite element problems grows at most linearly in the depth of refinement. This is achieved by viewing the computational available version of the BPX preconditioner as an abstract additive Schwarz method with exact solvers. AMS CLASSIFICATION: 65F10, 65F35, 65N20, 65N30.